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Untitled, May 17, 1864.
After nearly two weeks of the most desperate fighting, Gen. Grant, who marched out at the head of assuredly not less than 150,000 troops, the flower of the land, with the most accomplished generals in the army at his side, is, by the help of powerful reinforcements of fresh men, apparently about to crush Lee's forces, never estimated at over 85,000 strong, and cut off, not only from reinforcements, but supplies. Does anybody believe that if General Lincoln had withheld Burnside's corps, as he did McDowell's from McClellan, and had sent off Sigel and Couch in other directions, as he did troops upon whom McClellan relied for co-operation, that Grant would have won any victory? And does anybody believe that if Blenker had not been withdrawn from McClellan's army, and McDowell not been detained at Fredericksburg, Richmond would not have been ours nearly two years ago, and the nation spared the dreadful slaughter of South Mountain, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, and these last terrible battles south of the Rapidan? What a price has the nation paid for making a commander-in-chief out of a mere retailer of smutty jokes!